He wants out of San Antonio. Here’s why the entire league is paying attention to where Leonard plays next season.

The draft is next week, the opening of free agency is two weeks away and it might be a month before LeBron James decides where to take his talents, but what may be remembered as the wildest NBA summer ever has already begun.

The first domino in the latest off-season that can fundamentally reshape the league fell on Friday afternoon when several media outlets reported minutes apart that Kawhi Leonard no longer wants to play for the San Antonio Spurs. It was a seismic moment even in a league used to such developments by now.

Here’s why.

1. Leonard is one of the best players in the entire league. He was the most valuable player of the NBA Finals in 2014 and a top-three MVP candidate in 2016 and 2017. He’s the perfect type of star in today’s NBA. The problem is that he was hurt for most of last season, when a quadriceps injury sidelined him for all but nine games, and Leonard’s health has jeopardized his future with the only NBA team that he’s ever played for.

2. The Spurs are widely admired as the league’s model franchise. There are certain NBA teams that feast on drama. San Antonio is not one of them. For the last two decades, the Spurs have been allergic to inner tumult. Spurs coach Gregg Popovich and general manager R.C. Buford built an organizational culture and created a team that won five championships between 1999 and 2014 under the quiet leadership of Tim Duncan, and they are so respected around the NBA they’re often mentioned as a potential LeBron James destination for that reason alone. This is the type of stuff that never happens to the Spurs.

3. He could be going to the Lakers. Not long after the initial reports of Leonard’s dissatisfaction, ESPN reported that Leonard, a Southern California native who has only played for the Spurs, would prefer to be traded to Los Angeles. As it turns out, the Lakers play in Los Angeles. The Spurs might be loath to trade him within the Western Conference, but Leonard has an unusual amount of leverage: His contract expires after next season, and his value is connected to whether he’s willing to re-sign wherever he gets dealt. NBA players have more power than ever, and they no longer have to wait for their free agency to switch teams. They can simply demand a trade.

Kawhi Leonard might not be playing for Gregg Popovich next season.
Photo:
soobum im/Reuters

4. He might not be the only NBA star going to the Lakers. Even if they make a trade for Leonard, the Lakers would still have the salary-cap space to chase free agents LeBron James and Paul George. That’s right: Kawhi Leonard, LeBron James and Paul George could realistically play for the same team. Even the Golden State Warriors might gulp.

5. All of which might explain this cryptic tweet from Lakers owner Jeanie Buss this week. (Or it could be as meaningless as most tweets.)

6. They could also make a deal with the Lakers’ rival: the Boston Celtics. There is no team in the league with a war chest of assets to match Boston’s. The Celtics called the Spurs to inquire about Leonard’s availability last season, according to ESPN, and they could outbid the Lakers or any other suitor if they felt confident that Leonard wouldn’t merely be a one-year rental. Boston has budding young talents in Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown, a star on his own expiring contract in Kyrie Irving and the bounty of draft picks normally associated with awful teams. If they really want him, they have the means to get him, and Leonard would only solidify a team that appears capable of contending for next year’s NBA title.

7. They could also make a deal with the Celtics’ new rival: the Philadelphia 76ers. If they were looking for a complementary player to Ben Simmons and Joel Embiid—and they are —the Sixers couldn’t do any better than Leonard. He would cost the NBA equivalent of a fortune. But he would also be worth it.

8. Leonard might be losing millions in guaranteed salary. If he changes his mind and re-signs with the Spurs this summer, the notoriously frugal Leonard would be eligible for the “supermax” contract extension, a five-year deal worth $219 million. San Antonio is the only team that can offer him such a lucrative deal, and this player who missed nearly an entire season to injury would be leaving millions of dollars on the table by signing elsewhere.

9. But the Spurs don’t have to trade him. Popovich had an odd reaction when Spurs forward LaMarcus Aldridge requested a trade last summer. “Whoa, nobody has ever said that to me before,” he said. They sat down for dinner, hashed out their differences and Aldridge was never traded. The only reason any of this became public was that Popovich revealed it in the middle of last season—when Aldridge was named to the All-NBA second team. The Spurs have been here before, and they could take the same measured approach to the Leonard situation by doing nothing.

10. And yet doing nothing seems unlikely at this point. Because this is the NBA in 2018.